Thursday, July 17, 2008

Kay Ryan is the new Poet Laureate!


I’m thrilled that Kay Ryan is the new Poet Laureate! Here are some excerpts from the press coverage.

From the New York Times
Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: July 17, 2008

When Kay Ryan was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, the poetry club rejected her application; she was perhaps too much of a loner, she recalls. Now Ms. Ryan is being inducted into one of the most elite poetry clubs around. She is to be named the country’s poet laureate on Thursday.

Known for her sly, compact poems that revel in wordplay and internal rhymes, Ms. Ryan has won a carriage full of poetry prizes for her funny and philosophical work, including awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1994, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, worth $100,000.

From the Washington Post
Verse of the Turtle
Taking On the Role of Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan Sticks Her Neck Out


More than a decade and a half ago, despairing that her poems would ever find an audience, Kay Ryan found herself writing one about a turtle. It was about as personal as a Kay Ryan poem ever gets.

Ryan's appointment as the nation's new poet laureate, to be announced today by Librarian of Congress James Billington, will cap one of the most unusual careers in American letters. Hers is "a very original poetic voice," Billington says, "almost the antithesis of the things you hear booming at you every day."

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The Washington Post article talks about her 30 year partnership with Carol Adair. They were married last month in Marin County. It shouldn’t be true, but everytime I read about queer couples getting married, legally, officially, I cry. So congratulations Kay Ryan. I hope you spend lots of time at the Library in Washington, DC!

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